This invention relates in general to foliage coating and treating systems, and more particularly, to automated foliage coating and treating systems.
Artificial plants have become increasingly more realistic in recent years. Unfortunately however, even the best silk artificial plants still do not appear completely natural and lifelike upon close examination and scrutiny. To address this problem and to provide an alternative to artificial plants, techniques have been developed for preserving real plants and foliage. These techniques typically involve coating a live plant with various plastic surface coatings which act to preserve the plant.
To coat or treat plants in commercially reasonable quantities, partially automated assembly line techniques have been developed. Such techniques include the steps of manually dipping the plant in the protective and/or cosmetic coating, manually shaking any excess coating off the plant and then drying the plant. An overhead conveyor is used to transport the plant from step to step. In a typical installation, as many as 5 to 10 workers are required to manually shake excess coating from the plants before the plants are attached to the conveyor. This excess coating removal step tends to be very time consuming. Moreover, the quality of the excess coating removal can vary from worker to worker. Also, the manual shaking coating removal step tends to leave a large amount of undesired waste coating deposited in the work area.
As used herein, the term "coating" includes preservative coatings, cosmetic coatings and other liquids or sealers.